


I've Been Losing Sleep

by Railyard_Ghosts



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Brotherhood: Final Fantasy XV, Comfort, Fluff, M/M, Sharing a Bed, Sleepy Cuddles, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-18
Updated: 2020-08-18
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:54:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25977049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Railyard_Ghosts/pseuds/Railyard_Ghosts
Summary: Noctis struggles with loneliness for the first few weeks after moving into his apartment. Ignis, ever faithful, is there to help him through it.
Relationships: Noctis Lucis Caelum/Ignis Scientia
Comments: 13
Kudos: 82





	I've Been Losing Sleep

As stubbornly as Noct tried to isolate himself, loneliness still crept into him. It snuck in through his breath and squeezed the bottoms of his lungs and wrapped around his ribs, settling like a snake, and constricted all day. ‘Anxiety,’ Ignis called it once, but Noct disagreed. _He_ did not get _anxious_. _Prompto_ got anxious; _Prompto_ got nervous and jittery; tests, exams, new places, high sidewalks and small arcade booths. Prompto got anxious over stupid stuff that went away when it was removed.

_He_ did not get anxious. It was more like…like he was uncomfortable all the time, or stressed, or angry, and he didn’t know why or how to fix it.

It started with the new apartment. It started after he moved in. Then, as Ignis began spending overnights with him, the snake low in his lungs started to go away and it was easier to sleep at night. Then Ignis brought sheets from the Citadel, smelling of cold marble and wet stone, and he slept even better after that. Then Ignis brought fine quill-down pillows from the Citadel, and he stopped waking up at night altogether.

For the first time since he’d moved out on his own, Noctis slept through the night for a week straight. Ignis – apparently happy to stay anywhere that _wasn’t_ his own home – shared the bed with him, and lay between Noct and the rest of the room like a wall. Each man lay on their side with their backs to one another, but Noct tangled his ankles into Ignis’s while he slept.

The first thing Noct noticed since he’d moved out was how…differently they’d filled out over the years. He was still growing into his own body, but Ignis sprouted like a weed. He’d always been thin to begin with, but it wasn’t enough for their teen years; Ignis spent too damn long as all knees and elbows and knobs and skinny ribs, awkward and gangly, and balanced it out with layers of clothing to hide the juts of bone. When Noct stared at himself in the mirror, he didn’t see the same; he saw a too-soft middle, a distinct, crease-like line from his sternum to his navel, and minor swells of muscle on his bicep and shoulders. He wondered if it’d stay; he wondered if it’d ever balance out with the rest of him.

He wondered if he’d end up like Prompto, all tight, compact, corded muscle on a deceptively-small frame.

Or maybe he’d be like Gladio, but without the tree-like size.

Maybe he wouldn’t look like any of them.

Then what _would_ he look like?

It was easy not to think when Ignis was there. When Ignis had an ankle on top of his and their backs were touching, and his skin was warm and the bedding was comfortable, and the sun was barely up. It was too early to be awake, yet there he was, listening to his friend breathing behind him. The pillow still smelled like his old room, and Noct breathed in the smell of feathers.

Thank Shiva for Ignis.

Then Ignis’s alarm went off, and Noctis found himself loudly sighing, too sleepy to put the filter on his mouth and lungs. He felt the mattress shift, the alarm silence, and he moved every sleepy limb to roll over and drape over his friend; leg over his hip, arm over his waist, and cheek between his shoulderblades.

“No,” he mumbled.

He felt Ignis chuckle, the sound rumbling through his chest. The sound of his heartbeat combined with the reverb in his ear sent a little heat to his face. He _liked_ it when Ignis laughed for him; he felt the same way when Prompto laughed at a joke he made, or Gladio grinned up at him after being knocked on his back. It made him feel funny.

He kind of liked it.

Ignis’s hand laid over his arm, writer-soft and bed-warm.

“It is my alarm to wake up, highness,” Ignis reassured, his voice still sleep-soft. “Not to get out of bed.”

“Don’t do that either.” 

_Petulant_ someone called him once. Petulant and spoiled. At the time, Noct didn’t know what it meant, but he knew it was an insult and it grated the underside of his skin. Now at 16, he knew what it meant. But they just didn’t _understand_.

He squeezed Ignis’s middle. Ignis hummed, the sound reverberated through his chest into Noct’s ear again.

They lay like that for a while; he didn’t feel himself drowse. He just knew he was tired and comfortable. Ignis was warm against him. He wanted to lie like that forever.

Then Ignis moved and he tightened his grip without thinking, earning a ‘Noct, let go’ and he let go before he annoyed him too much. To his pleasure, rather than get up, Ignis rolled onto his back and lay an arm around him, already wielding his cell in his other hand. Noct wriggled back in and resumed his prior position – head on a shoulder, arm over his waist, leg over Iggy’s – and watched as he thumbed through his phone.

To his relief, he was turning all the alarms off. Then he muted it altogether. Then Ignis put it back, screen down, and lay his other over Noct’s shoulders to hold him, eyes sliding closed.

Noct pressed in a little closer. Ignis smelled like old cologne, some sort of sandalwood blended with his natural chemistry. He smelled like safety.

The last thing Noct remembered before falling asleep was fine, long fingers combing into his hair, the smell of skin and sandalwood, and the steady rush of air breathed through Ignis’s lungs.


End file.
